About Belle Brett

Belle Brett is a proud graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program. As a child, she produced what would now be called graphic novels, but alas, only the drawings remain as the words were strictly in the oral tradition. Now, several degrees and careers later (teacher, career counselor, researcher), she writes mostly novel length fiction, (no pictures, but with a cinematic flavor), about coming of age across the life span. She has completed two novels: How to Write a Best Seller, about two middle-aged friends who decide, as a solution to their respective problems, to pen a best seller about a woman with a perfect life, and Gina in the Floating World, the tale of a young woman, whose stint as a bar hostess in Tokyo leads her down a darker path. Her short story, “Heartbreak Hotel,” about the same protagonist, was published in Del Sol Review. In addition to writing, she is an artist and enjoys traveling and dancing with her husband and aging contemporaries to live music in the dive bars of Somerville and Cambridge. All of it is grist for her writing mill.

In one of my (as yet unpublished) novels, two best friends in their middle years set out to write their own novel to solve their respective problems. Aside from a general agreement that the end product will be a work…

For a few seasons, I watched “American Idol.” I marveled at the resilience of the young people who, in front of millions, listened to some pretty raw criticism—“That was horrible!” was a frequent Simon Cowell comment. Of course, the ones…

For those of us without many writing credits to our name and audacious enough to attempt longer-length fiction, the mantel of “writer” is heavy and may be hard to own completely once we stick our toes into the competitive world…

For those of you who read my October 10, 2013 entry (“Purposeful Hoarding”), you will know of my penchant for hanging onto things (not so much balls of string as the archives of my life.) Somewhere in a box (probably…

As a writer, I am always looking for ways to flex my metaphorical muscles. In reading about the Red Sox team and their unlikely (by their previous year’s record) 2013 World Series championship, I couldn’t help notice some of the…

Maggie Smith

About Us

Dead Darlings is devoted to celebrating the novel, from the process of creation through revision, promotion and publication. The authors, alumni from GrubStreet Boston’s Novel Incubator, have gathered to provide support for all novelists: aspiring, developing or successful.